Beige-coloured vulcanised rubber embossed with a prayer in ebonite typeface. It is in a rectangular wooden frame and was displayed at the Great Exhibition of 1851 for blind visitors. The prayer reads: “WHEN THOU PRAYEST ENTER INTO THY CLOSET, AND WHEN THOU HAST SHUT THY DOOR, PRAY TO THY FATHER WHICH IS IN SECRET; AND THY FATHER WHICH SEETH IN SECRET SHALL REWARD THEE OPENLY.”

This framed prayer was made to illustrate the versatility and properties of vulcanised rubber. Vulcanised rubber is made by immersing rubber in molten sulphur. The resulting product is a material that is much more durable and can withstand higher and lower temperatures than unprocessed rubber. This process was discovered by Thomas Hancock through a series of experiments conducted after he had filed a provisional patent in 1843. The American rubber industrialist Charles Goodyear independently discovered this same process a few years prior, but had not applied for a British patent.

This object is part of a collection relating to the Hancock family, acquired in 2018 from a descendant and family historian of the Hancocks. The collection comprises portraits covering 4 generations of the Hancock family, personal and business archives, and a series of related objects. Thomas Hancock is the centre of the story – inventor of the patent masticator and founder of the British rubber industry. The Hancock company ran until the 1930s, led by Thomas’s nephew and assistant, James Lyne Hancock, and then a great nephew John Hancock Nunn.